Karen Kieser Prize Concert : U of T New Music Festival

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

FACULTY of MUSIC

Karen Kieser Prize Concert

U of T New Music Festival

Tuesday, January 14, 2020
7:30 pm

Walter Hall, 80 Queen’s Park

Presented by Gregory Lee Newsome

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates.
For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat,
the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across
Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

PROGRAM

Like A Memory (2002) Hildegard Westerkamp

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano - Hildegard Westerkamp, diffusion
Marla Hlady, sculpture

Attending to Sacred Matters (2002) Hildegard Westerkamp

Hildegard Westerkamp, diffusion

Klavierklang (2017) Hildegard Westerkamp

Text by Hildegard Westerkamp

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano & spoken voice - Hildegard Westerkamp,

diffusion

Intermission

Prelude (2019)

Francis St-Germain

Quatuor Cobalt

(Guillaume Villeneuve, Diane Bayard, Benjamin Rota, Frangois Leclerc)

Karen Kieser Prize Presentation

Gregory Lee Newsome & Francis Ubertelli

Quartetto 2 (2018) Francis Ubertelli

Quatuor Cobalt

(Guillaume Villeneuve, Diane Bayard, Benjamin Rota, Frangois Leclerc)

Technical Assistance: Eliot Britton, Peter Olsen, Kristen Antunes,
Adam Fainman, Ryan O’Grady, Tristan Zaba

Special thanks to: Sherry Lee, Institute for Music in Canada,
Jackman Humanities Institue

The Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music

The Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music is awarded each year to a graduate
student in composition whose work is judged to be especially promising. Karen
Kieser was a distinguished triple-graduate of the Faculty of Music at the University
of Toronto and a former Head of Music at CBC Radio. Friends and colleagues
endowed The Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music upon her death in 2002 as a
tribute to her life, her work and her passionate devotion to the cause of Canadian
music and musicians.

Past winners of the Karen Kieser Prize are:

Rebekah Cummings (2018) and
Bekah Simms (2018)

Tyler Versluis (2017)

Sophie Dupuis (2016)

Shelley Marwood (2015)

Patrick McGraw (2014)
Christopher Thornborrow (2013)
Adam Scime (2012)

Riho Esko Maimets (2011)

Kevin Lau (2010)

Constantine Caravassilis (2009)
Igor Correia (2008)

Fuhong Shi (2007)

Christopher William Pierce (2006)
Katarina Curcin (2005)

Craig Galbraith (2004)

Andrew Staniland (2003)

Abigail Richardson (2002)

Fearless
Microlattice
3 Unuttered Miracles
Perceptions de La Fontaine
Imaginings
Glass
Walking
After the rioT
squall
Starsail
Sappho de Mytilene
Three Songs of Great Range
Tightenings
Melody with Gesture
. . . walking away from . . .
The Fenian Cycle
Tapestry
dissolve

e

Karen Kieser (1948-2002)

Karen Kieser was a passionate
woman. She cared deeply about
many people - her friends and
colleagues, her husband Larry,
her parents, siblings, nieces and
nephews - and about many
things - her work, her religious
faith, her home and garden,
travel, art and music. But Karen’s
strongest passions and deepest
commitments were dedicated to
two things: Canadian music and
public broadcasting. The two came
together in her distinguished career
at the CBC. Karen Kieser was born
in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire,
England, on February 19, 1948.
She died just 10 days before
what would have been her 54th
birthday, on February 8, 2002, after
a courageous, five-year battle with
ovarian cancer. She held three
degrees from the Faculty of Music
at the University of Toronto: a
Bachelor of Music and a Master of
Music, both in Piano Performance,
and a Master of Arts in Musicology.
She could have had a career as

a concert pianist, and indeed
she gave many performances
throughout the 1970s in North
America and Europe, both as a
soloist and with the Canadian
Electronic Ensemble. But by then,
she had already been bitten by
the broadcasting bug. From 1973
to 1977, while still in her twenties,
she hosted important CBC Radio
and CBC Stereo music programs
like Music Alive and Themes and
Variations. The quality of grace
under pressure she displayed in
that role would characterize all her
later endeavours, and she never
lost her focus on the audience
as the ultimate raison d’§tre for a
broadcaster’s work.

As music producer with the flagship
network program Arts National
from 1977 to 1982, Karen spent
the following decade as first deputy
head (1982-1986), and later head
(1986-1992), of CBC Radio Music.
She set three records, as the
youngest, longest-serving head of
music, and - what probably made
her most proud - the first woman
to hold the position. Throughout
her career, she was a trailblazer
for women in senior positions at
the CBC. Her tireless work ethic,
ability to master countless details
while keeping an eye on the big
picture, and unique combination
of unfailing good manners and
steely determination, made her
both an inspiration and a role
model. Karen’s tenure at CBC
Radio Music had many highlights,
including a renewed emphasis on

live broadcasts and documentaries,
numerous prestigious special
events and international awards,
and expanded audiences. She
championed the cause of
Canadian music and musicians
through the creation of Canadian
content policies for classical music
broadcasting on CBC, an ambitious
commissioning program, and the
establishment of CBC Records as
a high-profile label with a reputation
for excellence both at home and
abroad. She was equally committed
to finding and developing new
broadcasting talent, and many
of the leading lights of the music
department today (both on and off
the air) were recruited and nurtured
under her watchful eye. While still
head of music, Karen had been an
eloquent advocate for the creation
of Glenn Gould Studio. In 1992, she
became the facility’s first general
manager. In a very real sense,
this “jewel in the crown,” which
combines an intimate live recital
hall and a state-of-the-art digital
recording studio, is another of her
lasting legacies.

From 1994 until illness forced her
to stop working in 1999, Karen
was co-ordinator of strategic
initiatives for CBC English Radio.
Among the numerous projects she
worked on during this time were
the Festival television specialty
channel application, the successful
application for the CBC’s pay
audio channel Galaxie, the move
of CBC Radio in Toronto from
AM to FM, and a CBC Television

dance special, among many others.
Despite being diagnosed with
cancer in 1997, she continued
to work for another two years:
a decision typical of her lifelong
devotion to duty. Even thereafter,
she remained active as an arts
consultant, writer and volunteer,
serving on juries and panels for the
Canada Council, the Ontario Arts
Council and Metro Toronto. In 2000,
she was honoured with the Vice-
President’s Award for outstanding
achievement in the service of CBC
Radio. For the first time, the vice-
president of English radio, Alex
Frame, insisted on presenting the
award personally.

Those who knew Karen Kieser
well remember her warm smile
and thoughtful concern for other
people, whom she always treated
with dignity, respect and countless
quiet acts of kindness. They speak
also of her unflaggingly positive
and sincerely optimistic outlook,
restless curiosity and wide range
of interests, insatiable appetite
for hard work, ability to motivate
and inspire people to exceed their
own expectations, and insistence
on holding others (and most of all
herself) to the highest standards
of quality in every aspect of life,
both professional and personal.

She conducted her battle against
cancer with characteristic rigour,
energy, clear-sightedness, humour,
a stubborn refusal to surrender,
and, in the end, calm acceptance
and inner peace.

PROGRAM NOTES

Like a Memory explores that
area of aural perception in which
we hear music in sounds and
sounds in music, where scrap
metal structures become musical
instruments and the piano becomes
a strange sound sculpture.

Many things came together in this
composition. In 1985 I took my
tape recorder and microphone
and walked along Slocan Lake in
the interior of British Columbia,
Canada, to an abandoned old
house I had discovered some days
before. Among the few remains
inside was a piano. Many strings
had broken, pieces of wood,
some rusty nails and wires were
lying among the strings, and rats
had nested in its sounding board.
Some keys were missing and of the
remaining ones, not all keys were
working. I had found a “prepared
piano” in the deepest Cagean
sense and delighted in improvising
on this “instrument” and recording
the sounds that emerged. I also
played and recorded snippets of
classical music that I remembered
from piano lessons years ago. They
sounded delightfully out of tune and
“off”.

In 2000 I went back to the same
region with photographer Florence
Debeugny to collect sounds and
images for a project on ghost
towns called At the Edge of
Wilderness. Fallen down buildings
and rusty metal structures became
soundmaking devices as I moved

through the abandoned industrial
sites, “playing” on anything and
everything and finding the most
fascinating resonances. Whether
the sounds came from an old
steam engine or an out-of-tune
piano with broken strings, they have
become the musical instruments for
Like A Memory.

Attending to Sacred Matters is

one in a series of pieces based
on the sounds of India. Here I am
working specifically with the sounds
of the many religious and spiritual
practices that I encountered and
recorded in this country—such
as the chanting from the Sikh
Golden Temple in Amritsar, bells
and ritual sounds from various
Hindu temples, sounds from an
Ashram in Rishikesh and the voice
of Swami Brahmananda, Muezzins
calling for prayer from various
mosques, chanting at dusk on the
Ganges in Rishikesh, bells from a
Jain temple, the chanting of OM,
and so on. In addition, there are
the sounds of water and the voice
of environmental activist Vandana
Shiva.

What do we consider to be sacred
in our lives and how do we attend
to it? This question, my travels
in India and my long-standing
environmental concerns formed
the impetus for this composition
and are somehow brought together
here.

Klavierklang is a sonic-musical
journey into the complexities of
piano playing. During the past few
years Rachel and I often reflected
on the challenging and traumatic,
but also inspiring experiences we
have had with piano teachers, the
roles our mothers’ ears played in
our musical development and how
much the piano has been both a
sanctuary for sonic explorations
and soundmaking, and a site
of trauma and discouragement.
Ultimately Klavierklang is a journey
towards the piano playing we have
always loved, into the magic of its
sound.

Klavierklang was commissioned by
Rachel Iwaasa and was created
with the financial assistance of the
Canada Council and the BC Arts
Council. Many thanks go to David
Bloom, who directed Rachel in the
dramaturgical aspects of her live
performance.

Prelude is an updated vision of
German Romanticism. Namely, as if
Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler and
E.T.A. Hoffmann lived today with
the same aesthetic and political
concerns as before. It is, moreover,
in Hoffmann’s writings that the
piece initially draws its inspiration.
His tales - strewn with mises en
abyme, caricatured characters and
dichotomies - which constantly
plunge into fantastic realism make
him a faithful representative of the
essence of this troubled time. In
order to get closer to the romantic
spirit, some idealized values of

this period are put forward: those
of the Middle Ages; a return to
nature, to pure emotion and the
acceptance of dissymmetry. Thus,
for approximately seven minutes,
Prelude plays with our cultural
references by navigating between
microtonal motet, contrasts and an
almost grotesque quote of sacred
music.

Quartetto 2 illustrates a parallel
between the shift to atonalism
and the Dionysian experience
of looking into the irrational. It
seeks to overwhelm the listening
parameters and redesign the tonal
music geometries through an
analysis of language in a structure
that is ontologically posterior to the
system that instantiates it, i.e., the
complex relationships between the
signified and the signifier. Quartetto
2 seeks to reschedule music inside
a system of logically inevitable
propositions, such as “protocol
sentences” in the definition of a
grammar where any identity of
opposites, any “transformational
equivalent,” entails a denial of the
“principle of non-contradiction.”

Changing things make possible
the continued existence of other
things. The reality of a string quartet
in today’s technological world is
confronted with a present that is no
longer recognizable, in which the
screams of expressionism fossilized
long ago. The ideas conveyed
here would like to challenge this
assertion.

COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES

Hildegard Westerkamp was born
in Osnabruck, Germany in 1946
and emigrated to Canada in 1968.
After completing her music studies
at the University of British Columbia
in the early seventies she joined the
World Soundscape Project under
the direction of R. Murray Schafer
at Simon Fraser University (SFU).
Her involvement with this project
not only activated deep concerns
about noise and the general state
of the acoustic environment in
her, but it also changed her ways
of thinking about music, listening
and soundmaking. Vancouver
Co-operative Radio - founded
during the same time - provided
an invaluable opportunity to learn
much about broadcasting, and
ultimately enabled her to produce
and host her weekly program
Soundwalking in 1978/79.

One could say that her career in
soundscape composition and
acoustic ecology emerged from
these two pivotal experiences and
found support in the cultural and
political vibrancy of Vancouver at
that time. In addition, composers
such as John Cage and Pauline
Oliveros have had a significant
influence on her work.

While completing her Master’s
Thesis in the 1980s, entitled
Listening and Soundmaking - A
Study of Music-as-Environment,
she also taught acoustic
communications courses until 1990
in the School of Communication

at SFU together with colleague
Barry Truax. Since then she has
written numerous articles and
texts addressing issues of the
soundscape, acoustic ecology
and listening, has travelled widely,
giving lectures and conducting
soundscape workshops
internationally.

In 1993 she was instrumental in
helping found the World Forum for
Acoustic Ecology (www.wfae.net),
an international network of affiliated
organizations and individuals who
share a common concern for the
state of the world’s soundscapes.
She was chief editor of its journal
Soundscape between 2000 and
2012 .

Born in 1994, Francis St-Germain

is a composer, saxophonist and
improviser based in Montreal.

He holds a Bachelor of Music in
mixed composition (2017) from the
Universite de Montreal, under the
direction of Pierre Michaud, where
he also studied with Ana Sokolovic.
Interested in long-term
performances, he founded the
company Les Concerts en Alcove
in 2016, producing in situ
multidisciplinary events focused
on sound, movement, chance
and spatialization, with the aim of
democratizing contemporary art.
These include the Concert aux
puces (2016) - which was created
in collaboration with the composer
Maxime Daigneault at the Arte Flea
Market - and the Molecules concert

series (2017), held at LOCAL 250
(temporary art gallery), as well as at
MaBrasserie Brewery Cooperative.

Francis St-Germain also
collaborated with the theater
companies Tete au corps
(HISTOIRES ORDINAIRES, Limbes)
and La reine ninja (Festival des Arts
de Ruelle, Arene ninja), as well as
with the collective of filmmakers Le
Zoo. Most recently, his research
is focused on linking aspects of
mysticism and cerebralism. His
piece Beata Ludovica Albertoni
(2019), commissioned by the
violinist Simon Alexandre, is his
most recent representation of this
idea.

Born in 1968 in Ouebec City,
Canada, Francis Ubertelli began
studying composition under
Armando Santiago at the Ouebec
Conservatory. He later studied
under Franco Donatoni and Azio
Corghi at the Accademia Nazionale
di Santa Cecilia in Rome, taking
classes with Ennio Morricone and
Luciano Berio. He graduated in
1996. A few years later, following
the death of his mentor, plagued
by a profound aesthetic crisis
combined with an extended
nervous exhaustion, he quit music.
That year, he met the shadow of
the divine during a game of chess,
which redirected his path in life. In
2011, he published his first novel
in France, an essay comparing
ongoing social changes with the
9/11 attacks, which he witnessed.
In 2015, after some years spent

as a teacher, he returned to music
following the birth of his son and
a chance encounter with an old
acquaintance. He is currently
preparing his thesis as part of his
doctoral studies at the University of
Toronto.

Francis Ubertelli has written
numerous works for chamber
ensemble and received grants and
commissions from the Canada
Council for the Arts and the Monte
dei Paschi di Siena in Italy, the
Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Toronto’s
Arraymusic, the Charm of Finches
flute quintet, the Sounds of Silence
Project, Brussels’s Thelema Trio,
the Fibonacci Trio, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, the
Alizee flute ensemble, the Ensemble
contemporain de Montreal,
Antwerp’s Champ d’Action, the
Alcan string quartet and the
National Arts Centre Orchestra
in Ottawa. In addition, selected
works have been featured at the
Conservatoire royale de Bruxelles’s
trombone examination and at
the Universite de Montreal string
quartet performance section. His
music is regularly played in Canada,
the United States, Europe and
South America.

Hailed in the press as a “keyboard
virtuoso and avant-garde muse”

(Georgia Straight) with the
“emotional intensity” to take a
piece “from notes on a page to a
stunning work of art” (Victoria Times
Colonist), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa
is recognized among Canada’s

foremost contemporary music
pianists. Selected to close the ISCM
World New Music Days 2017 in
Vancouver, Rachel has performed in
the Netherlands, Germany, US and
across Canada, with engagements
including Muziekweek Gaudeamus,
Music TORONTO, Music on Main,
Vancouver New Music, Redshift,
Western Front, Vancouver
Symphony, Victoria Symphony,
the Aventa Ensemble (Victoria),
CONTACT contemporary music
(Toronto), New Works Calgary,
Groundswell New Music (Winnipeg),
and Vancouver Pro Musica.

Rachel has commissioned or
premiered works by many of
Canada’s most eminent composers,
such as Hildegard Westerkamp,
Rodney Sharman, Jocelyn Morlock,
Nicole Lizee, Jordan Nobles, Jeffrey
Ryan, Farshid Samandari, Marci
Rabe, and Emily Doolittle. One half
of the acclaimed contemporary
flute/piano duo Tiresias with Mark
Takeshi McGregor, Rachel has also
collaborated with Yannick Nezet-
Seguin, Judith Forst, Heather
Pawsey, the Bozzini Quartet,

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
Caroline Shaw, and Richard
Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. Her
interdisciplinary adventures have
led to work with photo-based artist
SD Holman, playwright/director
David Bloom, choreographer Tara
Cheyenne Friedenberg, and multi-
media provocateur Paul Wong.

Rachel’s debut CD, Cosmophony,
has been praised as “brilliant” and

“unforgettable” (Vancouver Sun)
and for “the passion, intensity
and the nuanced playing she’s
acclaimed for... she manages to
instill a sense of dynamic tension
and pull to every note” (The
Province). Rachel was a co¬
founder of the Queer Arts Festival
in Vancouver, recognized as one
of the top 5 festivals of its kind
worldwide.

Emerging ensemble, the Cobalt
Quartet stands out for its eclectic
and modern musical approach,
exploring with as much enthusiasm
the ancient music on period
instrument as the contemporary
creations. Socially engaged
musicians, the members of the
quartet are dedicated to making
music ever more accessible to a
wide audience, defying stylistic
and social boundaries. Increasingly
active, the quartet concluded
its first French tour in 2019 and
multiplies collaborations with
internationally renowned artists
such as Laura Andriani, Yegor
Dyachkov, Yukari Cousineau, Jutta
Puchhammer, Silvia Mandolini and
Vincent Lauzer. The ensemble has
also been a collaborative quartet at
Domaine Forget since 2018.

Involved in the display of today’s
repertoire, the ensemble showcases
contemporary music with several
collaborations and creations by
Quebec composers. The quartet
performed the world premiere of
Francis Ubertelli’s Quartetto No.

2 at the Canadian Music Center

in Toronto and recorded a work
by Maggie Ayotte on the album
Deductions from bassist Remi-
Jean Leblanc. More recently, the
ensemble has created Miniatures by
Francis Battah on gut strings.

The Cobalt Quartet was founded at
the University of Montreal in 2017.

It has been mentored by Annick
Roussin, Yegor Dyachkov and
Laura Andriani (Alcan Quartet).

Coming up at the 2020 New Music Festival:

From Bach to Latin America

Wed Jan 15 | 7:30 pm | Walter Hall | Free

Thursdays at Noon: Andre Mehmari, solo piano

Thu Jan 16 | 12:10 pm | Walter Hall | Free

Andre Mehmari Chamber Works

Thu Jan 16 | 7:30 pm | Walter Hall | Free

For full festival schedule please visit music.utoronto.ca

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